Chapter Text
What can I do for you?
What can I do
That no one else can do?
“You should come join me, Pearl.”
The way Rose said her name always made something in her turn to ice, and she could never tell if it was fear or excitement. If there was even a meaningful difference.
Rose stood even taller when she was atop the warp pad, smiling carnivorously in her direction. The fat pink coils of her hair swayed in time to Greg’s music. One hand twisted the microphone cord around her finger. The other beckoned Pearl.
Pearl always watched these little fiascoes, nursing her jealousy from the sidelines but unable to resist the chance to hear Rose sing. How could they all have so much fun with this stranger in their midst? They’d spent thousands of years together, living and fighting alone against the world, just the four of them, and now… he came along. She refused to be involved, as a silent protest.
But Rose kept curling her fingers in Pearl’s direction. Her legs were more obedient than the rest of her.
She hesitantly stepped up to Rose on the warp pad, the music an awkward, cloying miasma around her. Was she expected to dance? She didn’t want to do something like that in front of that interloper!
Rose’s grin widened, lips pulling back far enough to show off gums slick and red as a slaughterhouse floor. Pearl could hear her own pulse, tucking her neck in just in case an artery was visibly fluttering along the surface of her throat.
“The show’s not complete without you.”
Rose’s hand drifted into Pearl’s hair, trailing over her gem.
< ( But I can’t do anything! I can’t sing, I can’t play any of these ridiculous instruments, at best I could perhaps tidy up some of these cords-- )
“Pearl,” Rose purred, lips hovering inches from her gem, “There’s something only you can do for me.”
Pearl blinked up at the much taller Gem, mentally scrambling for an answer. What was it? What did she want? What could Pearl possibly –
Rose’s hand was still held out to her. When Pearl failed to take the hint, Rose reached down and took her forearm, lifting the small, thin Gem up onto her hind legs. Pearl complied, but she was still confused.
Rose handed her microphone to an equally baffled Greg, returning to slide both hands around Pearl’s thin forearms. She nodded at Greg to return to playing, and began to sway.
Pearl was expected to dance. She grimaced beneath her mask and tried to swallow her heart. This kind of attention from Rose would normally put her over the moon with joy, but in front of everyone else it felt almost lewd.
But she couldn’t disappoint Rose. She fell into step as Rose began to lead her, though anxiety and distraction kept her movement somewhat mechanical. She kept glancing over her shoulder, occasionally twisting her head around to nervously gauge the reactions of her team mates. Amethyst was grinning in a few different places. Garnet was as stone-faced as ever, but Pearl thought she saw the fusion’s shoulders discolor with the hint of a blush.
“Pearl,” Rose’s deep, rich voice poured over her with a wash of hot breath, “You’re not dancing with them.”
The command implicit in Rose’s voice was subliminal, but Pearl understood immediately. Mortified, she returned her full attention to Rose. The corners of Rose’s maw curled into a smirk, and she shortened the distance between them as they turned. There was no way for Pearl to avoid occasionally brushing against her now as they moved. Her broken face burned. Thank God - thank her - for the mask.
The heat in her face seemed to seep into her brain and made it foggy. Between it and centuries of practice, it became easier to lose herself in the dance. She wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off of Rose now.
Rose threw her into a sudden dip, something her flexible body accommodated with a dramatic flare. She felt Rose’s fingers slide between the valleys of her knobby vertebrae on her upper back and couldn’t quite muffle the startled, strained wheeze that escaped her.
She was too fixed on Rose’s face (or her mouth, rather; she didn’t really have a face apart from that very prominent feature) to notice the thorny tendrils sliding out from beneath Rose’s dress until they brushed against the bottom of her protruding rib cage.
That almost made her look down, but she resisted. Rose leaned into the dip, looming over her small partner. The writhing lamprey-mouthed worms that made up her ‘hair’ fell in a veil around them, close enough that Pearl could hear them slithering wetly against each other. Rose was easily three times her size; she could crumple her, tear her asunder with a flick of her wrists. It was like standing beneath a skyscraper, the tugging dread of its local gravity sinking into the pit of her being.
The vines coiling lightly at her side looped around her waist, settling around the prominent swell of Pearl’s hips. When Rose righted herself, she brought Pearl up with her, tightening her grip. Fingertips and thorns alike bit into her as Rose pulled her in for a hot kiss, her lips enveloping Pearl’s gem.
That made Pearl’s wheezing hike into a gasp, and she shuddered in the air. It was getting easier and easier to forget their audience. It was difficult to dance when your feet were clear off the ground, but she did her best to bend when Rose bent, and compliment the dips and twirls with appropriate arches of her spine.
She felt more vines snake up her leg. The wormlike coils of Rose’s hair closed in on her as well, brushing close enough to leave thin trail of cold slime wherever they made contact. Pearl looked up at Rose, beyond flustered at this point and silently begging her to tell her what she wanted.
“Give yourself to me,” her leader, her liege, her everything growled against her gem hungrily, dispensing with the sweet tone that was usually laced into her voice. This was not a request; this was an order, given by the one who’d overturned an empire, who Pearl had sworn her fealty to, who had once been a god. Her light, gentle touches were squeezing into firm, possessive grips.
This was more than a dance.
That thought should terrify her, but knowing what Rose had in mind just made coils of heat loop through her entrails much like the things slowly ensnaring her limbs. They caught her arms, trapping her scythes uselessly against her forearms and lifting them into the air. Everything was tightening and closing in around her - Rose’s hands, the vines, the air in her throat, the music in the air –
Pearl did her best to keep up with the dance, even as it got harder to move. She let the tendrils take hold of her limbs and direct them as they may, hanging limply and at her ladyship’s mercy.
Those vines suddenly twisted her around in the air, turning her to face her team mates and even the increasingly horrified human watching them. Rose hoisted her up like a trophy kill, hands gripping Pearl’s forearms tightly enough that she swore she felt the bones strain.
Amethyst had retreated into her form somewhat, various parts of her blushing. There were hints of intrigued grins on Garnet’s shoulders that made Pearl’s racing heart skip a beat.
Rose’s human fingertips and vines were leaving a network of teal bruises and ligature marks wherever they constricted her. The fog of the dance made the pain exquisite, and Pearl’s lower eyelids fluttered when Rose’s fingertips dug harder and harder into one of her forearms. The larger Gem was forcing even her flexible joints past their limits, twisting it around once, twice, crack.
Wondrous agony inundated her like a crashing tidal wave, and she’d never been so grateful to be mute. The worst sound she could release was a shuddering gasp, glancing at her mangled limb from the corner of her eye. Thorny vines dug into the break point, tearing into the skin and ligament where her bones had become separated.
With a tight twist and a squeeze Rose liberated her forearm from the rest of her, freeing the now-harmless blade from her tendrils. Blue, ichorous blood oozed freely from both broken ends of her arm, uneven gore and muscle tissue hanging frayed and ragged.
Rose admired the blade she now held, turning it over and watching the way the wrist flexed limply when she moved it just-so. For a moment, she wielded it like one of her own swords, and Pearl thought pride might overtake the pleasure-pain wracking her. Why hadn’t Rose ever done this during battle? To have been taken apart and used as Rose’s personal weapon - she could imagine no greater dignity.
Rose bit down on the blade, holding it and the bleeding chunk of limb still attached to it in her many teeth, like she’d seen humans do with flowers in their tangos. She resumed the dance, her grin playful and hungry as she twirled Pearl around to face her again, the movement leaving an arc of teal blood spattered across the floor.
Their human guest was getting increasingly upset at this morbid display, and even as the frenzy of the dance ate away at her consciousness, Pearl took some smug satisfaction in that. Greg wasn’t a Gem. He’d never understand this.
The vines winding around her extremities were getting very invasive. Slender tips tore past her clothing her and there, snaking their thorns into forbidden places. Rose’s hair was closing in on her, too, a few of the longer coils joining the vines wrapped around her thigh.
The smooth, cool, fleshy surface of the worms was a welcome relief compared to the tight, harsh vines - until the tips of the worms found their goal.
Concentric rings of tiny needle-like teeth bit into her. A few in her supple thighs, one in her calf, one trying to fit between two of her ribs. They burrowed into her flesh like starving leeches, going deeper than any of the vines could. She felt hundreds of little fangs ripping into her, devouring muscle tissue as they wormed through her ligaments and around her bones. Trickles of turquoise blood dribbled from the edges of the pits they made in her skin, but their fat, wet bodies kept most of it plugged up inside her. Their powerful coils made her legs their own, twisting her hip-bones out of their sockets with a sickening pop.
She was close. Her gem was glowing brilliantly, now, and she could feel the gem on Rose’s stomach heating up until it left a welt against her. It was hardly the first time she’d fused, but the first time Rose, Rose of all people had chosen her as a dance partner. The thick tears trailing out of her eyes were from the storm of pleasure and pain and the bliss of being consumed, becoming one with the Gem she loved more than anything, In a more rational state of mind, she’d be mortified that Rose had chosen to do this in front of everyone else, but in this moment she was proud to give her body to Rose so openly, so completely.
Something plunged between her ribs - then back out of them - and her eyes flew open. The thickest of Rose’s coils had impaled her through and through, the lamprey mouth-ed thing bursting out of her chest. She swore it grinned up at her from where it had cracked through her knobby wishbone, pained blue with her blood and chunks of teal meat still stuck between its teeth.
That sent her over the edge. With her lungs half-eaten, she could no longer gasp, but she arched with what she had left of her spine, feeling herself disappearing into the fusion. The last thing she felt was Rose’s teeth closing around her head before the glow of their gems overtook them.
Rainbow Quartz unfolded out of the bloody mess of her birth, kicking her long leg back into an exaggerated ballet curtsy at her audience.